Q&A: Leggett Talks Brickyard, Part Three

Patch sat down with Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett for a one-on-one interview on the Brickyard property controversy. The following is the final in a three-part series with his answers to Patch’s questions.

The , a legal battle between those who want to preserve an organic farm and those who want to convert it into soccer fields.

The case pits Nick Maravell, the farmer who’s worked the land for more than 30 years against the Montgomery County Board of Education, which, Maravell says, violated an open meetings act when it transferred the Brickyard Road lease from him to Montgomery County.

As the legal questions remain, in Part Three of this series Leggett talks about who will have access to the park amenities that would be located on the site of what is currently Nick’s Organic Farm.

Patch: Regarding the public use of public land:

The contract for the development of the Brickyard property is currently in the request for proposal process. During this process, Montgomery County will seek out and contract with a company to develop the property as specified in the request for proposal. After negotiations with a chosen contractor, that contractor will be in charge of the development, management and upkeep of the land.

“[The contractor] can have all kinds of arrangements whereby they participate with the public,” Leggett said, explaining that whoever gets the contract to develop the land through the request for proposal process would also determine access to the land.

“They’re the one making the investment in it,” he said. “What we simply want to do is to have soccer more available in the county and for residents to be able to utilize that. Some of that may be in private hands; some of it may be in public hands. But if we put it in public hands, it means that we would have to go out and develop the fields, pay all the expenses to do so. We don’t have that. And so in many places in the county we are providing outlets that may be in some part private and public”

Patch: Regarding concerns that the land will then not be public at all:

“In other words, now if I go back to the people and I say, ‘Okay: you will now support that the public, the county will operate all of these fields. So it’s not private, it’s now public. And you’ll support the recreation department and the parks department operating these fields – would you support it?’ The answer would be ‘no.’ So I don’t accept that as a real, honest answer in terms of what people say in the debate,” Leggett said.

Patch: Who, exactly, will use these fields?

“Who ever gets it in terms of the request for proposals,” Leggett said. “What I don’t want to do is have the county come in and spend a lot of money to develop [the land]. So we want a private/public partner relationship, so that a private developer would develop it, and it would have the use for that development process. But for us to [develop the fields], we would have to spend money to do it, and we don’t have the money to do that.”